[MV] Comparing iListen and ViaVoice in 2004...

[David K. Wehe]

Opinions vary.  I use them both frequently, but primarily iListen for 
short e-mails that I quickly manually correct as I go because it is 
so fast.  ViaVoice is much more accurate for me, particularly in 
SpeakPad.  If it is going to be more than a paragraph, it'll be via 
ViaVoice.  Again, I find manual correction to be quicker.  Since 
ViaVoice doesn't learn except by adding new words, there isn't much 
benefit in automated correction.

It is too bad that we can't give the better speech engine and library 
from IBM to the dedicated folks at iListen.  MacSpeech clearly cares 
deeply about their product and customers.

David.

We can't do much about the speech product accuracy, but we can 
control the sound input we provide.  I still wonder if there is much 
variation in recognition accuracy between Andrea, Shure, and Parrot. 
The on-off switch makes the Andrea my choice, and I haven't seen any 
improvement using the other models mentioned.  Is this a common 
finding?



>WAS: Re: [MV] Re: iListen 1.6.4 - VV & Panther
>
>On 1/20/04 3:01 PM, "JSenecal at aol.com" <JSenecal at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>  I used to use ViaVoice for dictating program code, but since the release
>>  of iListen 1.6, I've been using iListen instead. I found Via Voice easier
>>  to use when dictating into it's own Speak Pad application, but for
>>  dictation into other applications, iListen works much better for me.
>
>Interesting.  I'm curious to hear about comparisons between iListen and
>ViaVoice 3.x in 2004 running on Panther 10.3.2. Basically, I own them both,
>however my version of iListen is very old and I stopped using it after the
>first couple of revisions because at the time, ViaVoice worked much better
>for me.  So basically I'm curious to compare them with the newest version:
>iListen 1.6.4...
>
>-  As was stated, there will be no further upgrades for ViaVoice - so I
>imagine it will become more buggy over time with the newer systems.
>-   Surprisingly - I have found that ViaVoice still works good in Panther.
>However, I have found that the accuracy is far higher in the SpeakPad
>program - then outside of it.
>
>In my experience with ViaVoice - I find that in SpeakPad I can get 95
>percent accuracy or better sometimes! the accuracy is much lower without
>SpeakPad...  Maybe somewhere around 85 percent or so.
>
>Q:  iListen 1.6.4 - Given that you have successfully trained it and are
>doing corrections as you go - what is the general accuracy during regular
>use? 80%? 90%? 95%? BETTER?.....
>
>Q:  Correction mode is pretty easy in SpeakPad. Originally, a lot of people
>on this list were complaining about correction mode in earlier versions of
>iListen... So how cumbersome is correction mode now?
>
>I would welcome any other comparisons between the two programs.
>
>
>--
>Thanks - RevDave
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